[PHP-DEV] Updating Autoconf and Libtool

Peter_Kokot · February 9, 2026, 10:29pm

Hello, just notifying you about two changes in the Autotools build
system targeted for PHP 8.6.

Updating the minimum required Autoconf from 2.68 to 2.71:

github.com/php/php-src

Require Autoconf 2.71 or newer

master ← petk:patch-autoconf-version

opened 04:38PM - 07 Feb 26 UTC

petk

+25 -31

This updates the minimum required Autoconf version to 2.71. - Autoconf versio…ns 2.70 started supporting C11 standards. - Autoconf 2.71 was released soon after 2.70 providing some bugfixes. Changes: - Removed obsolete AC_PROG_CC_C99 macro. In Autoconf 2.70 and later this is done by the AC_PROG_CC macro. - m4_normalize is not needed for AC_CHECK_HEADERS and AC_CHECK_FUNCTIONS macros anymore, as the argument is normalized internally by Autoconf in these newer versions. - Adjusted C11 check. - Removed ac_cv_header_sys_types_h_makedev hack for AC_HEADER_MAJOR macro when using Autoconf versions prior to 2.70. This also enables using --runstatedir configure option in the future.

Updating the bundled Libtool to current version 2.5.4 (or if there
will be stable 2.6.0 in the very near future):

github.com/php/php-src

Update libtool to newer version

master ← NattyNarwhal:update-libtool

opened 08:47PM - 28 Jan 26 UTC

NattyNarwhal

+18659 -11235

The version of libtool we're using is old enough to vote, and occasionally issue…s crop up related to it (i.e. this should fix GH-17310 incidentally). Update it to the latest version from upstream (serial 63 from 2.5.4). I don't believe we carry any patches that don't just replicate fixes in newer versions, so it should be OK to just use upstream's version. Newer libtool has more files that we have to include manually if not using aclocal, and some macro names were changed, so adapt to this. Tested on linux/ppc64 and macos/arm64, with autoconf 2.72. I'm a little worried about the impact this might have on other platforms since this is a major bump. In particular, AIX might be turbulent, since library naming conventions changed a lot in libtool.